Helen Benedict’s new novel, The Good Deed, follows four refugee women whose lives suddenly collide with an American tourist’s on the Greek island of Samos after she rescues a drowning child. To write the novel, Benedict, a Professor of Journalism at Columbia University and a winner of the Ida B. Wells Award for Bravery in Journalism, drew from four years of interviews with refugees in Samos as well as her past coverage of the Iraq War. Kirkus Reviews praised The Good Deed for “prompting the reader to consider why and how we ask a person to prove their own humanity.”